Mastering Your Social Media Presence: Q & A with Matt Beck

With over half a million subscribers on YouTube, Matt Beck has leveraged the power of social media to spread a wealth of knowledge to hair stylists around the globe through his platform, FreeSalonEducation.com. We sat down with Matt in his studio in New Hope, PA to pick his brain about social media and online branding as part of our upcoming Coffee Talk.

How does marketing on social media differ from other mediums?

Social media is free. As a salon, you should be killing your social media from a local standpoint, just by creating, not by paying for ads. Invest your money in tools to create better content instead. Too many businesses make the mistake with using hashtags incorrectly. For instance, they put out a post and use #balayage. That’s fine if you’re trying to reach the masses. As a salon, what do you want to attract? Balayage? Probably not because that encompasses people from all over the place. Instead, try using hashtagging your local town or county. People get too wrapped in the big world and don’t focus enough on the small town.

For business owners or stylists who don’t have a lot of resources to puttowards social media, what do you recommend?

Focus your time on creating. Create a few different types of content such pictures of hair, a video of the process, maybe a salon tour video, etc. Then, judge that content as you put it out to determine the engagement. When you find out what gets the most engagement, then put your ad money into that. Start with $5 and just focus on your local town. Always assess first. Most people pay for the least engaging content. It’s almost like giving all the walk-ins to the non-busy stylist. There’s a reason that stylist isn’t busy. Same thing with content. Make sure you find out your best pieces and then run ads based on that.

For anyone who is looking to make more videos for social media, where should they start?

It depends on what you have to invest. I used to say, “all you need is an iPad,” that’s not really true anymore. The quality of what people put out is much better now. You can use your phone, but you need a good microphone. That is key. No one will watch a video with poor audio. As you evolve from there, you can buy things you feel that you need to make your content better. Do your research.

How have you seen videos on social media change over time?

I don’t think they are changing, but I think they need to change. Salons aren’t really using video the way they should or really at all. There’s value in being able to showcase your salon on video. People don’t google salons anymore, but they will look at your Instagram. It’s really important that salon owners and stylists focus on video because we’re a visual industry. Photos only showcase so much, but a video can show what a style actually looks like and how it moves. Create the customer experience. That’s what the client wants to see.

When you’re creating all this content, how do you handle the negative comments?

I’ve just come to realize that you can’t please everybody, and if you are, you’re not doing it right. If you’re trying to put out something that is for everyone, you won’t create a core audience. Sometimes I like when negative comments come in because when you have a community, they back you up, which in turn, creates engagement. If you really want to create something, that’s always going to be a part of it.

Coffee Talk with Matt Beck

We are so happy to have Matt share all of his knowledge on social media and video in our first Coffee Talk of 2019! If you want even more advice from the FreeSalonEducation.com guru, Register here and tune in at 1 PM EST on Monday, January 28 to watch.